Noah Begbroke was sentenced to Tier Three Aversion Therapy today after an arson attack in which his ex-girlfriend Corrina Saunders suffered extensive burns. ‘A cruel act of wanton destruction,’ Judge Bamber-O’Malley commented in her concluding remarks, ‘intended to punish Corrina Saunders for daring to break free of Begbroke’s coercive control.’
It is thought that Miss Saunders will be present to see justice carried out at Janus, which has raised questions about the wider psychological effects on victims as they see their ordeals played out onscreen in a virtual mock-up of the crime. These CGI videos or ‘reels’ cast the criminal as the victim, but some psychologists suggest it may exacerbate the trauma experienced by the victims nonetheless.
However, Aversion Therapy is not without its supporters. Some government ministers, the right-wing press and many members of the public have shown support, saying that it is an appropriate response and the victims have the choice whether to be present or not.
NewsFlex has tried to talk to a number of victims who have observed Aversion Therapy on their attackers, but they have refused to comment, saying only that they had to sign a confidentiality agreement to not reveal what they had seen and heard.
This is Dan Gunnarsson reporting for NewsFlex.
Grace resisted the urge to run. She knew that what she was about to see could never be unseen.
It was the first time she’d been in the Tier Three Aversion Therapy clinic. Conrad had given her temporary security clearance. The walls of the small room were painted charcoal grey, which added to the feeling of claustrophobia. There was a black reclining chair at the centre which gave the impression that a dental surgeon had decided to oust the usual clinical white and go for something more sinister.
The temperature began to rise and the screen situated in front of the black chair flickered with orange and red pixelated flames. In the semi-darkness, the wavering glow reflected on a large glass window opposite the door – the witness room.
Grace couldn’t bring herself to look at the window.
Noah Begbroke couldn’t run. A restraining strap across his chest held him tightly in the chair and a nasal spray relaxant had already been administered. However, he was still agitated, his arms twitching. His dark eyes scanned the virtual fire in front of him in small, alarmed circles. He knew what was coming. He’d seen it all once before.
Grace wished she was back in Tier Two on the lower floor. At least down there they were giving people what they needed. That, and healing people, had been her aim when she joined Janus Justice. But this – this was something different altogether.
Was this giving people what they needed?
Her eyes flicked over to the window again. Maybe it is.
Some people thought it went too far. The protests outside the clinic and parliament were testament to that.
And then there were those who thought it didn’t go far enough, who saw it as an easy way for criminals to get out of a prison sentence.
And at their most extreme were the vigilantes – hidden, masked, lawless.
Begbroke had been found guilty and then screened and assessed at Tier Two. Grace had worked with the team on his case. There was nothing that could be done with him on her Tier: no chemical imbalance, no mental health problems, no childhood trauma. Nothing to explain his actions. The criminogenic factors in Tiers One and Two were usually based on biology and circumstance. Up at Tier Three, morality itself played a bigger part.
It was dark in the witness room, so it was impossible to see anything but shadows. She looked away, grateful. The temperature rose again. If she’d known she’d be working with an arsonist, she wouldn’t have worn a jumper and tights.
Bloody Conrad, dragging her into this.
‘I don’t want to,’ Begbroke whined, anxiously staring at the cannula jutting out of the back of his hand. His eyes followed the intravenous tube up to where Abigail, the Tier Three clinical manager, was removing one syringe and attaching another. ‘I don’t want to,’ he repeated. Grace cast an eye over the metal dish nearby containing vials of drugs, some of the brand names of which she didn’t recognise.
‘Bit late for that, don’t you think, Begbroke?’ said Abigail.
Abigail was unremarkable – average size, strawberry-blonde hair, not particularly attractive – except for her unusual coloured eyes, the lightest brown Grace had ever seen, flecked with yellow which blazed like amber in the orange light. She felt a fleeting admiration for Abigail, so calm, almost emotionless – quite the opposite of Grace herself.
How did Abigail cope seeing the crimes onscreen day in, day out? It seemed like a punishment not only for the offender.
One of Dan’s articles on NewsFlex – the most popular news website – had been titled ‘The jailer becomes the jailed’. If only he knew the full truth.
‘Can’t face up to what you did?’ Abigail whispered as she leaned over to check the cannula was secure. Begbroke looked up at Grace imploringly. What did he expect? Words of comfort, after what he’d done? Abigail squeezed the syringe and soon his eyes glazed over and settled lazily on the screen in front of him.
Abigail swiped and stabbed at her handheld shell, the faint green and blue lines of its motherboard visible through the transparent crystal. Bright patterns of data suddenly appeared, lighting up the screen.
Could they really fix an offender with a single treatment? The therapy Grace used could sometimes take months to reach the heart of the problem and get her clients back on their feet as law-abiding citizens. And, of course, it took its toll emotionally on her. Dan had said it was ironic that empaths were often attracted to such work, considering how it might affect them.
He wouldn’t be happy if he knew where she was working today. Although the journalist side of him would be curious. The public were well aware of what happened in Tiers One and Two, but Tier Three was a different matter.
Grace was accustomed to using medication, usually the new generation of anxiolytics and antidepressants. In fact, she herself had worked with the pharmacists to develop the types of drugs that would help her clients most effectively. She looked down at the vials again. These must be serious drugs if they had to resort to syringes and cannulas. One she recognised as a relaxant, one she assumed was a psychotropic drug, the other one, she had no idea. But there was so much secrecy about this tier.
She immediately shut down her burgeoning curiosity. There was no need to know, she wasn’t coming back here. As though Abigail sensed how she was feeling, she mouthed, ‘You okay?’
Grace nodded, but she could feel her body trembling.
There was a cry from the witness room as the face of a young woman appeared on the screen, staring down at Begbroke with shining brown eyes. Her long dark hair was parted in the middle. Her bronzed skin was smooth and flawless except for a single tear-shaped beauty spot on her left cheek. She was smiling, seemingly unaware of the flames lapping around her.
Grace felt a wave of adrenaline. This jarred with her own moral compass. She would have to shut out of her mind all the arguments she had against Aversion Therapy just to get through the next half an hour. Then she would have a go at Conrad for springing this on her. It was written into their contracts, wasn’t it, not to go against what was morally justifiable to the employee?
What did Abigail find morally justifiable?
Begbroke shook his head from side to side in minute tremors, but his eyes were transfixed in a glassy haze on the woman on the screen who was smiling down at him. Grace knew she wouldn’t be smiling if she knew who was looking at her.
‘What’s your name?’ demanded Abigail.
‘Noah,’ he mumbled, eyes locked onto the screen.
She shook her head. ‘He’s not fully cooked yet, give it another minute or two.’
Abigail appeared to zone out for a few moments while Grace waited anxiously wondering what was going to happen next.
‘He’s ready,’ Abigail said suddenly. ‘The giveaway is in the constriction of the pupils.’ She looked back down at her shell and jabbed at it again. A steady stream of smoke began pumping in through the filters into the room. She took two masks from behind one of the panels, passed one to Grace and they put them on.
Begbroke was now under the influence of strong drugs that were going to make him see his crimes from a very different perspective. Part of her couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. But then her thoughts turned to Corrina Saunders, who had suffered at his hands. She would have agreed to this punishment, demanded it even. Grace swallowed her feelings – but they writhed inside her.
Abigail locked her amber eyes onto Grace and said, ‘I’m turning up the emotisonics.’ Therapeutic soundwaves were used everywhere these days – in the gym along with the music to get you going, at hospital to heal you, in school to help you focus and absorb information. But these emotisonics were different – they caused negative emotions to make the therapy even more unpleasant for the offender.
The people behind the window were protected by a fine shield of barely visible mesh embedded in the glass, but here in the clinic they would have to use headbands to block the waves. Abigail passed one to her. Grace put it on, took a few deep breaths and set her body into a defensive stance, as though about to receive a blow.
‘This is the usual routine. Wait until the meds kick in and then show the offender preparation reels before the big show.’
Grace tried to swallow, but her mouth was dry.
There was Corrina on a video loop – healthy, cheerful shots interspersed with post-crime photographs. The effect was startling. Begbroke was mesmerised as the images rotated between a happy, smiling woman and a blurred image of brown, red and black that, each time it appeared, felt like a jab to Grace’s gut.
Abigail checked the screens that displayed Begbroke’s vital signs.
‘We can never be too careful,’ she said quietly, looking over at the window and back again.
Too careful?
‘Maybe don’t look. Don’t want to upset yourself,’ Abigail said kindly.
The jailer becomes the jailed.
But Grace noticed that Abigail didn’t turn away.
Grace glanced briefly back at the screen. The image had changed to one of a living room in soft pastel shades, curtains drawn and lamps casting a gentle light. A large mirror above the fireplace reflected the dark-haired woman sitting on the sofa looking down at her shell, maybe reading or watching a programme.
The smoke in the treatment room had covered the floor like a rolling mist and the sound of crackling flames came through the speaker. A distinct change had come over Begbroke. He cowered in the chair, his dry eyes locked to the screen, his mouth hanging open.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Abigail suddenly, loudly, after a few moments, making Grace jump.
‘Corrina,’ Begbroke whispered. ‘Corrina Saunders.’
On the screen, the woman jumped up as the window smashed and a bright missile landed in the middle of the floor. It exploded in a ball of liquid fire, opening up like a huge flower of flames.
‘What did Noah Begbroke do to you?’ asked Abigail.
After a few moments of groaning as he shielded his face, Begbroke started speaking in a high-pitched voice, one that did not seem to come from him. ‘He’s my… he was my boyfriend. He was horrible, violent, degrading… I tried to get away from him…’
They knew the details, of course. It had all been played out in court. This wasn’t a fact-finding mission. It was a punishment – down to the bad root.
Abigail dabbed at her shell again and the smoke came in thicker and faster. Grace felt as though she was an assistant at a Victorian seance, watching Abigail contacting the spirit of the victim through the offender.
‘Yes. I told him we were over, but… he told me… he told me…’ Begbroke cleared his throat. ‘He told me that no one would want me when he’d finished with me.’ He sat forward and gripped the arms of the chair, the veins and sinews in his hands pulsating beneath the dark hairs. He let out an odd yelp and then slumped back, as a medium might relax after the spirit had left, vacant.
Grace could see the freshly inked, dark-blue tattoo that all offenders had etched prior to treatment. It was an image of Janus, the two-headed Roman god, one of his faces pointing to the past, the other to the future, a number three at the centre. It bore a red halo of swelling. The ink would gradually fade over a period after treatment, the length of time depending on the severity of the crime. It served as a warning, a reminder.
‘He attacked your house? Is that correct?’ Abigail asked disinterestedly, as she checked the cannula in Begbroke’s now limp hand. Her manner was calm with a we’re-going-to-get-to-the-bottom-of-this attitude.
‘He’d been in my house, taken my smoke alarms out,’ Begbroke said in the soft voice again. ‘He thought I’d be asleep in bed… I should have died!’ His eyes darted about, his breathing frantic. ‘There’s fire! The room is on fire!’ The computer reacted to his terrified words, the crackling flames became louder, the heat rose, and then came the worst of all – the simulated smell of burning flesh.
Grace gagged and put her hands to her face, reeling even though she wore a mask. Abigail grabbed her arm and dug her nails in. Grace tried to pull herself together for the sake of the watchers behind the glass. Abigail released her grip, took the final vial of drugs from the dish and attached it to Begbroke’s cannula.
Moments later, he started jerking in the chair, fighting against his restraints, his eyes wild. He was coughing, panicking. ‘I have to get out… I have to get out…’ Grace looked in alarm to Abigail, but her face was stony.
Begbroke raised his hands slowly, heavily to his face and screamed.
What the hell had they given him to cause that reaction?
Grace turned to the screen, which showed the beautiful young woman also screaming, the flames encompassing her as she desperately tried to escape the burning house.
Grace couldn’t take any more. Horrified, she stumbled towards the clinic door, passing the glass window as she went, and taking in briefly, but fully, the sight of two misshapen hands against the glass, fingers missing or melded together, red-raw with scars, and the melted, burned face of the once beautiful Corrina Saunders watching justice being done.